Demystifying industry expectations job title-ui-ux designer

1. March 29, 2017

2. • Three core skills in the Area of Startup
Engineering;
1. Design (UI/UX)
2. Product Manager (we discussed this
last week)
3. Web/Mobile Developer
That are
taught and
nurtured in
our SV.CO
Program

3. Why is it important that
you know about this?

4. You must be wondering that
this is not relevant for you,
but

5. What if you don’t get your first customer?
and
What if you are in your final year?
and
What if you are thinking should you be getting a job in the
interim?

6. How do you know you
are job ready?

7. Demystifying Industry
Expectations:
Job Title: UI/UX Designer
Suma Sundararajan

8. One of the Graduation
Outcome for you

9. Seek employment or
Get Acquihired

10. A UI/UX Designer is

11. responsible for the discipline of
designing an end-to-end
experience of a Startup product.

12. What are the Attributes?

13. This job requires the individual to
have:
• excellent communication and
analytical skills
• the ability to describe complex
systems in terms of simple models
• having an intuitive taste for well
designed products

14. Key abilities

15. 1. Build Low-Fidelity Wireframes from User Research
2. Translate Wireframes into High-Fidelity UI Components
3. Understand and Contribute to UX Design
4. Understand and Contribute to Operations & Product
Development
5. Understand and Contribute to Pragmatic Engineering
6. Understand and Contribute to Startup Ethos and Culture

16. Build Low-
Fidelity
Wireframes from
User Research
Week 1
List out Wow Design Experiences
Survey & Interview Customers
Week 4
Designing wireframes that accurately model the
UX flow of a Startup product, either directly from
user research, or starting from a product
specification
List Design Skills
Week 2
Build Key UI Elements
Build Low-Fidelity Wireframes

17. Translate
Wireframes into
High-Fidelity UI
Components
Week 5
Week 6
About extracting UI components from a wireframe,
and building them out
in the highest fidelity required by the Startup
Engineering team Learn to Design a Sales Process by Reverse Engineering SV.CO
Receive Product Feedback from Senior
Get Code Review Feedback from SV.CO
Design a Great Customer Onboarding Process
Week 9
Polish your Product: Visual Design
Week 10

18. Enough of Theory!

19. Will walk you through the
journey of a UI/UX Designer

20. Srividya Sriram
UI/UX Designer
@ Freshdesk (our Graduation Portfolio Company)
Early
Years
• As a kid - wanted to be everything - Author, Doctor, Artist
• Interest was in painting/drawing - Grandmother was an
influence
• Full time artist was not easy because of many reasons
• Opted for Computer Science Group in Eleventh - as Science/
CSc was an in-thing
• Did not want to do Engineering - Closest to Engineering was
Architecture
• Opted to do Visual Communication (BSc) in Chennai
• Vis Com as a course does not exactly prepare you for the work
ahead!!
• Ad/Photography/Filmmaker
• Took the Advertising path

21. First
Experience • Started off as a Copyrighter
• Hoarding Text, Song for a Jingle
• First few months (Rs. 4K a month)
• Moved on to be Visualizer (D'zine Garage) in a web
development agency - first kind of websites coming out then
• College does not teach you what to expect from a job
• Thought of studying further (based on parent's advice)
• Masters in Advertising and Marketing
• Met a senior from College who mentioned that she was working
in Intel
• Advertising and Design made sense
• Technology and Design did not make sense

22. Entry to
Design
• Started off as a Copyrighter
• Hoarding Text, Song for a Jingle
• First few months (Rs. 4K a month)
• Moved on to be Visualizer (D'zine Garage) in a web
development agency - first kind of websites coming out then
• College does not teach you what to expect from a job
• Thought of studying further (based on parent's advice)
• Masters in Advertising and Marketing
• Met a senior from College who mentioned that she was working
in Intel
• Advertising and Design made sense
• How did Technology and Design did not
• She did her Masters in Interaction Design

23. Full Fledged
Designer
• Masters in Communication Planning and Information Design in
Carnegie Melon University, USA
• Changed to Interaction Design in 2nd semester (Graduated in
2008)
• Designer is not about doing the last mile
• Designer can contribute in rationalizing, decision making
through the entire course
• What is and what could be - Product
• Seed of an idea
• Internship at Yahoo in California (3 months) - Designer's work into
Corporate Context
• Google - UX Design - 2008 - 2012
• In the youtube team to begin with
• Google news
• Google plus photos

24. • Moved to Chennai for personal reasons, was a freelancer for sometime (endthought)
2012 - 2013
• 2013 - 2014 - Tried hand at doing a startup with a friend from Google
• At Freshdesk since 2014 - got contacted on Angel list, from a freshdesk employee,
looking for a designer
• Had hesitations to work in a Indian Company
• Was looking at just being a consultant
• Freshdesk was looking at B2B design and found that opportunity to be new and
interesting - Design for repetitive use
• Led design of Freshsales
• 40 people in Design Team at Freshdesk
• Srividya considers Design to be that Invisible thread that strings the product and
process together
Fresh desk

25. • Startups that Srividya thinks are interesting: Urban Ladder (organic growth), Zivame (complexity of
the product domain as perceived by the Society)
• Srividya says:
• Designer is not about doing the last mile stitching
• Designer can contribute in rationalizing, decision making through the entire course of product making
• What is and what could be
• Seed of an idea
• Whether it is B2B or B2C:
• The human element is the same for a designer
• Srividya’s Strengths:
• Understanding the customer requirements
• Keeping it simple, deserving and straightforward
• Hobbies: Singing, Painting
• Why Freshdesk (According to Srividya):
• Fast Growing Startup
• The diversity within the Design Team itself gives a platform to learn and contribute

26. Can it be you?
Of course…
Know what you are good at
Take a target
Achieve